Judge won't move trial pending jury selection

Jury selection for the murder trial of 17-year-old Justine Winter will remain in Flathead County District Court, according to a ruling issued Monday.

District Judge Katherine Curtis said the court will use the jury selection process to determine whether a fair trial can be held in Flathead County. Curtis ruled that if a jury can be put together, the defense motion for a change of venue would be denied.

Curtis said in her order that the defense had failed to prove that the potential jury pool has been “inflamed” by news coverage of the case.

Winter “failed to meet her burden to show that the publicity has actually inflamed the prejudice” of 84,544 potential jurors in the court’s district, Curtis wrote in her ruling.

Winter’s trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 8 and is expected to last about two weeks. She is charged with two counts of deliberate homicide related to a March 19, 2009, car crash that killed Columbia Falls resident Erin Thompson, who was pregnant at the time, and her 13-year-old son, Caden Vincent Odell.

Curtis, in effect, said that the serious nature of the crime itself led to any “inflamed” feelings in the community, and not the coverage of the case by the Inter Lake.

“The gist of the charges is that the Defendant attempted to kill herself and drove her car into the Thompson vehicle,” Curtis summarized in her ruling.

Elsehwere she wrote, “There is no suggestion that the actual coverage of the case by the Daily Inter Lake rather than the nature of the allegations against the Defendant served to inflame the readers.”

In his motion to move the trial to another court, Winter’s attorney, David Stufft, focused on the Daily Inter Lake’s coverage of her case, specifically comments left by readers on the newspaper’s website.

Stufft alleged that comments were “hateful and repulsive” and reflect reasonable grounds to believe there could not be a fair and unbiased jury chosen in Flathead County.

But Curtis determined that most comments were motivated by accurate coverage of a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Winter herself.

“By far, the vast majority of the comments reflecting ‘inflamed’ feelings were made following and as a result of the civil lawsuit filed by the defendant’s father” against Erin Thompson’s estate, Curtis wrote.

“There was no evidence that any of the articles were inflammatory, or tended to stir up in the community pervasive and strong passions of anger, hatred, indignation, revulsion, and upset, other than the postings on the website,” Curtis states.

The judge noted there have been other high-profile cases in Flathead County that have drawn similar degrees of news coverage and public comment, and those cases did not warrant a change of venue for the trial.

She also noted that because Winter’s defense successfully obtained the names of people who submitted website comments on the case, those people can be screened if they happen to be called for jury selection.

Curtis found that the defendant “failed to meet her burden to show that the publicity has actually inflamed the prejudice of or ‘infected’ the community to such an extent that a reasonable possibility exists that the accused may not receive a fair trial.”

She concluded that the proper procedure is a thorough selection process for the 175 prospective jurors to determine if jurors can be found who can set aside their opinions and consider the case impartially.

Curtis ruled on Aug. 5 that Winter will be tried as an adult in District Court. If convicted, she faces possible sentences of 10 years to life in prison, compared to 3 1/2 to 7 1/2 years she would have faced if tried in Youth Court.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com